The Idea Was Simple But A Real Pig
To Arrange. Get six of the fine young turks of British acting , put them in
a room together, roll the tapes and cameras. Unfortunately, Daniel Day Lewis
was too busy filming The Unbearable Lightness of Being to make it over form
Paris and Gary Oldman was rehearsing The Country Wife at Manchester's Royal
Exchange, though he turned up a few days later for a session of his own.

Nevertheless, on a late November
morning, Tim Roth, Bruce Payne, Paul McGann, Spencer Leigh and Colin Firth all
appeared incredibly - at Robert Erdmann's East London studio. On Offer, the
two things actors reputedly love best: free lunch and gratis publicity. Make
that three things. Actors love to 'network' and, of the above, virtually all
had met one or two (or in the ubiquitous Payne's case, three) of the others
either socially or professionally.

Individually they know they're good
but collectively -- putting egos aside for a minute -- they know they're unbeatable.
"Better than Estevez and all those tossers," as one of them graciously put it
(we won't say which). And with a certian 'cred' cachet that equals the corporate
power to enrich British film and theatre production. Even though Roth, ever
critical insists that "at the moment, European actors are better than us ...
Betty Blue, the performances, the joy in that."

"The cancelling of egos," is how
it is put by Payne, already a Face cover who, at least until the group shoot
gets going, whence he mugs like Machiavelli, has cancelled his.

Catholic in taste, to say the least,
the topics for today's discussion include famous mavericks Robert Duvall, Bob
Hoskins, John Malkovich and Don Johnson. Don Johnson?????

"Fucking brilliant," they answer
almost to a man.

Berkoff, Frears, Jarman, directors
with whom most have worked, also come in for the high praise, though it's official
- "the director as God no longer exists!" After a heated debate on the state
of theatre ("a politically sterile dungheap") and the function of criticism
during which the Face is taken to task ("where's the coverage? You're the difference
between a full and empty house"), Payne and Roth depart promising to put
their typewriters where their mouths are. But not before Roth, with unerring
timing, puts his mouth where the typewriter is.

"You gonna call me a thesp thug then?"
queries the bellicose 24-year old, the first to stalk across the photographer's
virgin white backdrop. He then plops down on the sofa having spent the early
hours reading to his two-year old son. A serious prole, Roth used to be in self-stacking
(Tesco's cereals), completely bypassing drama school with his first break, five
years ago, in David Leland's TV watershed Made In Britian (in which Payne also
figured).

He was then cast in Mike Leigh's
unforgettable Meantime (Gary Oldaman was the skinhead in the barrel). Leigh
told him to go away and come back as someone else, a method Roth's employed
with uncanny accuracy ever since.

"What Oliver said about taking your
makeup off and going home, and the RSC ethic of acting from the neck up, is
bollocks. Bruce feels the same way, acting affects your sex life, your social
life, how you take shit, it's 100%. In America they pay you to research your
roles."

Last seen testing the outer limits
of Kafka in Berkoff's Metamorphosis, which may yet be filmed (a role offered
after Berkoff reviewed Roth's work in King of the Ghetto and one Payne says
he turned down due to overwork), Roth is currently writing his own film treatment
with another actor. "All you need is an idea on a fag packet, it's a purely
selfish exercise -- I'm not gonna sit around waiting for offers."

Neither is Payne, whose swaggering
entrance with a Heathcliff-type portmanteau has not gone unmissed -- he's currently
writing a treatment about an 18th century "gutter Macbeth" with Don Macperson.

"Yo, clotheshorse!" jibes Roth, safe
in an ideologically-sound leather jacket. "We're service industry; we entertain."
In which case, Payne must be unit publicist to Roth's shop steward.

"I've just been to see how my shares
are doing." quips the only actor to walk of Absolute Beginners with his reputation
not only intact but enhanced (Payne's Flikker was a headbutt of reality in a
fantasmagoria of overkill).

"They'll be floating Bruce Payne
next." laughs Roth.

Where Roth is aggressive, Payne,
according to one observer, is "a total psychopath" with a demonic energy for
group and self promotion.

Already the first to Hollywood and
back with a Brooksfilm, Solar Babies, out in the New Year (it's a futuristic
kid's thriller co-starring Alexei Sayle), Payne has been busy juggling around
other commitments, notably the Belfast-set drama Lost Belongings and his own
plans to form the Payne Corporation.

The youngest at 23, Spencer Leigh
lacks Payne's assurance and probably his bank balance, claiming to be "skint
and destitute" and arriving with what looks like the entire contents of his
life packed into his brother's despatch riders bag. Despite being in constant
work since his tv debut three years ago in the acclaimed drama One Summer,
money is a bit of a sore point with the Liverpudlain; perhaps a hangover
from his two years on the dole or the knock-on effect of working with Derek
Jarman on Caravaggio and his recent six minute segment fro Don Boyd's
Aria.

He's telling Roth, their previous
contact restricted to "moody looks across crowded parties", about his micro
walk-on in Frears' new Orton pic Prick Up Your Ears, starring the missing
Oldman. "Yer, Alan Bennet said 'V ( Vanessa Redgrave) will love you -- a working
class lad from Liverpool' but I got all moody with her. Had to do an eye-line
and when I got back my lunch, for which I paid, was freezing cold."

Yet all of those present, Leigh seems
most aware of his good fortune. "The important thing is all of us here are having
a go. Really, I feel privileged, honoured to be here doing this because there's
millions out there not doing it and it's not their fault. "It is, he says, a
difficult business.

And precarious -- as Paul McGann,
the other Scouser would attest. Before jetting to Switzerland to meet Yello's
Dieter Meier about a possible film project, McGann reveals that he was originally
turned down, then auditioned five times for the role which suddenly, after years
of hard graft, has made him famous; Percy Toiplis in the controversial series
The Monocled Mutineer.

"See, Alan Bleasdale usually writes
with a specific person in mind and just didn't like me but, God love him, he
told me after that he'd been wrong."

Accommodating where Roth is private,
McGann, according to Payne, who's known him since RADA, is a "professional".
The actor, who has just completed Withnaill and I, Bruce Robinson's scathingly
funny, "implicity political" acting memoirs, "gets his priorities right". Accordingly,
this film made on a 1.5 million pound shoestring for Handmade Films offers "no
women, no sex, no car chases or stock viloence, just pure performance". This
in Britian is known as a risk; in Hollywood it could be called suicide.

When he finally enters late in the
day (Chaka Khan having given way to Anita Baker, the brie all but crawling off
the table), Colin Firth, a tall, duffle-coated figure, is immediately co-opted
into the group photo backline without the benifit of makeup or warmup. Despite
having met Roth two years ago under similar circumstances, Firth is clearly
the outsider. He's still wondering what exactly Hollywood is, having been treated
to the whole 'go West young actor' routine following his debut in Another
Country.

Hollywood, however, doesn't really
interest the diffident, beautifully-spoken Londoner who has unintentionally
"cornered the market in wet, sensitive, naive young chaps" and has just emerged
"blinking in the light, like a refugee" from a solid year's work on just-screened
Granada TV epic Lost Empires. This distance has caused Firth to question
the very essence of acting, "putting on a frock and chasing around one's ego".
He's not sure he wants to be doing it when he's 45.

"I don't think any of the people
here can do exactly what I or Tim do and I don't feel competitive, but I don't
feel intimidated either. Now Anthony Hopkins, that's genius."

This interview was purchased through
a vintage magazine store in England. The purpose of "publishing" this interview
is to give all Bruce Payne fans the opportunity to read it because there are
a lot of countries where you simply can't get a hold of the magazine or because
it cannot be found.